Read "The Shadow of a Man" by E.W. Hornung online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It was some moments before Moya looked higher than that hand, and it prepared her for a worse face than she found waiting for her own. The face was fierce enough, and it poured a steady fire upon the girl from black eyes blazing in the double shade of a felt wideawake and the overhanging mallee. But it was also old, and lined, and hunted; the man had grown grey in prison; whatever his offences, there was rare spirit in a last dash for freedom at his age. Moya had not thought so before. She was surprised that she should think it now. The last thing that she had expected to feel was an atom of real sympathy with the destroyer of her happiness. And yet it was the first thing she felt.
"Please don't look at me like that," she begged. "I wish you no harm, believe me!"